ContactPoint for kids: Helpful or harmful?

Q: What do you call a UK database of children’s details?
A. A disaster waiting to happen.

See, you didn’t even need a multiple choice answer for that one. OK, there may be a certain amount of mass hysteria involved in the launch of ContactPoint, a UK database that contains ALL the information available about vulnerable young people, but considering the amount of scare stories and government cock ups in recent years can you really blame them?

In the last year or so we’ve heard scandals regarding leaked information, kid details being splashed across the Internet, so is a UK wide server that contains sensitive data really going to help? Only last night Jonathan Ross ‘accidentally’ revealed his personal email in Twitter, so surely the same type of security issues could arise with ContactPoint- and here it would be kids emails and numbers being revealed rather than their adult counterparts.

ContactPoint data will be accessible to thousands of government and voluntary workers, and definitely open to mis-use. I’m sure the government intend this service to e a helpful way to preventing more baby P-like incidents, but I feel that perhaps they haven’t thought this through.

Opinion is divided however with one camp thinking this online server could be potentially dangerous whilst the other sees it as a way to aid children in need, and sift through large amounts of data at incredible speeds. A national roll out is happening soon, but how helpful or useful it will be is still to be decided.